He laughed and lowered his sword. “A good slave, even a mindless one, would have done as ordered,” he said. “So, even mindless, you have some sense of self preservation. Interesting. I might still try torturing you, in that case, after we—”
Lokith’s voice trailed away, his attention suddenly diverted.
He closed his eyes in concentration for a moment, focusing his sorcerous senses. The barrier he had placed around the valley where he had lost Bloodsong had been breached. It’s as I had thought! he realized excitedly. They didn’t die in the fall from the cliff and have now returned from their refuge.
He turned to Mani and Sol. “Dress this slave in warm clothing. I will paralyze her to make it easy for you.” He hissed words of power.
Jalna felt paralysis spread over her at once. Off balance, she started to fall.
Mani and Sol caught her and eased her down then went to gather clothes.
Lokith hurried away to gather men for the hunt.
JALNA LAY paralyzed as Mani and Sol removed her bonds. The knots were so tight, Sol started sawing at the ropes with a knife.
“He didn’t have to tie her so tightly,” Sol complained as she worked. “Poor thing. These must have hurt, awfully bad.”
“Yes,” Mani agreed. “I am certain that was Lokith’s goal.”
“I know,” Sol replied, “but still—”
“Careful! He’ll hear your thoughts!”
They had gathered clothing Torg Bloodear had earlier stripped from other prisoners. When Jalna’s limbs were finally unbound, they began to dress her. Soon, she wore leather leggings and a leather tunic. Sturdy boots were pulled onto her feet.
If only I could move! Jalna thought. She eyed the knife on the floor nearby that Sol had used to cut her bonds. Before they tie me again, I can grab that knife, and other weapons are near! And there are no guards to hinder me. I might get to the stables and get Tyrulf and get back here to the trapdoor while Lokith is elsewhere. I must move! Curse it! Now!
Ask for my help, said a voice in her head.
Nidhug? she asked with her thoughts.
My Love! Ask for my help! I obtained Hel’s permission!
Jalna hesitated, then heard Sol say, “Let’s tie her again before he returns, but not so cruelly. Maybe he will not notice and not tighten the ropes so they hurt her so much.”
Curse it all! Nidhug! Help me! Let me—
The paralysis lifted.
Jalna grabbed the knife on the floor. She scrambled to her feet.
Sol cried out in shock, stumbled backward and fell.
Mani jumped back, too. “Lokith! Help! She—”
In one smooth motion Jalna sliced open his throat.
He grabbed his neck and tried to scream but only bubbled a death-wheeze as he fell face down and died.
“Mani!” Sol screamed. She jumped to her feet and ran. “Lokith!” she shouted as she ran toward the door. “Help us! Help!”
Jalna chased Sol, hoping Lokith had not heard Sol’s cry through the closed door or detected Sol’s thoughts.
Sol jerked open the door just as Jalna threw the knife.
Sol screamed as she felt the blade sink into her flesh. She tried for an instant to claw at the steel embedded in her back, then fell forward out of the door and into the snow. Blood from the wound stained the silky strands of her long blond hair. She spasmed then lay still, dead.
The sound of Sol’s death-scream jerked Lokith’s mind away from his preparations for the hunt. He ran out of the stable and looked at the longhouse just in time to see Jalna framed in the open doorway as she slammed the door closed.
Lokith drew his sword and began shouting orders to nearby warriors as he ran toward the longhouse.
Inside, Jalna barred the door, momentarily considered trying to free other prisoners, realized there wasn’t time, grabbed a sword from the pile of weapons, and sprinted for the escape tunnel’s trapdoor.
She threw back its coverings and wrenched at the handle. It did not open. With a curse, she dropped her sword and used both hands, violently jerking at the door.
With a flash of purple Hel-fire, the barred door to the longhouse burst open and Lokith rushed inside. Into the longhouse behind Lokith came a group of Hel-warriors.
Jalna grabbed her sword and faced them.
“Throw down your sword!” Lokith commanded, his eyes blazing with anger.
“Bloodsong and freedom!” Jalna screamed as she charged toward him, sword in hand, determined to at least kill Lokith before she was herself slain.
Lokith hissed a word of power. His eyes flared with purple fire. He hurled a new spell of paralysis at her. His eyes widened in surprise. The spell had no effect.
He raised his sword just in time to parry her first stroke.
She drove him back one step, two. But his movements were too fast! She could not get through his guard!
The other Hel-warriors surrounded her. She backed away from Lokith, killed one warrior, then a second, but there were too many. Her sword was knocked from her hand by a side attack while her attention was directed the other way. Hands grabbed her, forced her to the floor, face down.
“Bind her!” Lokith ordered, then hurried to Sol. He could do nothing for her, he soon saw, except make her a living corpse. He went to Mani and decided the same. He returned to Jalna, now bound hand and foot on the floor. He looked down at her.
“For killing Mani and Sol, you shall be punished severely!” he promised, seething with anger. “But I don’t have time now to devise subtle delights. In payment for the death of my two slaves, your lover will be executed.”
“No!” Jalna cried, struggling against her bonds.
“After we have left on the hunt,” Lokith said, turning to one of his Hel-warriors, “those of you who remain are to kill the man hanging in the stable as slowly and as painfully as possible. “
“As you command, Lord Lokith,” the Hel-warrior replied with a grin.
He looked back at Jalna.
“You were trying to use the trapdoor just now. You were unconscious when Bloodsong escaped, so you didn’t know that she had used it, nor that I sealed it with powerful spells afterward. You never had a chance, slave. But now, because of you and your foolish attempt to escape, your lover is going to suffer horribly and die. Be comforted by that knowledge for the rest of your life.”
Tears rolled from Jalna’s hate-filled eyes.
“Tighter with those ropes!” Lokith shouted, and the warriors hastened to obey.
* * *
Above the encampment, two death-scented wisps of icy air whispered slowly higher into the sky, swirling about two unseen essences who were, for the moment, able to maintain a tenuous existence because of the limited, elementary magic they’d learned to wield while within bodies of flesh. But then the twin cores of existence slowly began to dissipate, the swirling air that surrounded them drifting aimlessly through the darkening twilight sky, until suddenly something reached out to them from far to the south, lent its magic to theirs, gave them a purpose for existing, a reason to endure. Revenge, it whispered to them. Revenge.
Fed by the magic from the south, the two columns of swirling air became twin breezes moving southward, answering the call of the Witch-soul who had touched them and was now giving them strength.
Free of Lokith’s magic and the prisons of flesh that had kept them enslaved to his desires, the souls of Mani and Sol rushed faster and faster through the gathering night toward the beckoning soul of she who had called, toward the castle of the Hel-Witch, Thokk.
* * *
Racing over the snow through the gathering night, Bloodsong and Ulfhild caught a death-scent on the cold air and heard a distant moaning sound.
“Hel-wind,” Guthrun said with a curse a moment later, now also hearing it. She turned to look back, her eyes glowing with the purple fire
of her night-vision spell. She could just see a hint of black clouds looming against the nearly black twilight sky. As they had expected, the northern sky pulsed with a much brighter purple glow than it had the night before.
“It must be one of Lokith’s sentries,” Huld assumed. “I wonder how many he left and—”
Realizing that Huld had broken off in mid-sentence, Guthrun looked over at her. The Freya-Witch’s eyes were staring blankly, as if she were entranced.
“Huld!” Guthrun cried, assuming a sorcerous attack. Huld jerked back to an awareness of her surroundings and looked at Guthrun.
“There are five Death Riders, each accompanied by five Hel-warriors, following us,” she said. “They are in five groups at different distances. Lokith is not among them. Our magical shield to avoid detection is working, but one Death Rider was stationed so near the spot where we left the woods that his inhuman hearing alerted him to us, after which he soon found our tracks. Now the others will, in turn, follow his tracks.”
“How do you know all that?” Guthrun asked, suspicious. “Did Lokith perhaps use sorcery to send you false information? Maybe to lead us into a trap?”
“I—” Huld began, then frowned. “I just know it. It is not a sending from Lokith.”
“Your Witch-senses have become more powerful. The Dance of Joy and being touched by your Goddess caused it!” Guthrun exclaimed.
“Do you suppose I have other new powers as well?” Huld wondered. Excitement at the thought built within her. She rode in silence, thinking about possible new powers and how they might be used to fight the immediate threat of the pursuing warriors. “We know,” she said at last, “from what happened before, that the Hel-horses eventually will catch up to us. And we can’t defeat five Death Riders and twenty-five Hel-warriors all at once. But the first group will be alone, in front of the others, since they were stationed nearest to the spot where we left the wood.”
“So if they get too close,” Guthrun continued, “are you thinking that we possibly could ambush and slay them? There’s no sunlight now, so my dispersing the clouds would do no good.”
“And to ambush them would require stopping. The others are too near this time to risk that, anyway, and their nearness also makes Ulfhild’s stopping to try to call more wolves out of the question as well.”
“So we must use other tactics,” Guthrun decided, “something that will stop them without slowing us down. But what? Some new power of yours?”
“Yes, that’s what I’ve been thinking. But what, I don’t know. I will have to search within myself to see what I can discover. Perhaps I can become consciously aware of any other gifts Freya may have given me,” she said, then grew silent with thought as the shape-shifters raced on, the northern horizon ahead and to their left pulsing ever brighter with purple light as Hel’s southward advance relentlessly continued and their pursuers drew steadily nearer from behind.
* * *
Atop Mount Jormungandr, its crimson-veined, black stone walls edged in ice and snow, the castle of the slain Hel-Witch, Thokk, loomed dark and silent in the gloom of the dying day.
Within the castle, within the Chapel of Hel, upon a stone altar carved with Hel-Runes lay the charred, skeletal remains of Thokk.
An icy breath of fetid air whispered into the chapel and toward the altar. It was joined moments later by another.
The whispering, death-scented breezes hovered near the altar then circled Thokk’s corpse.
Thokk’s remains collapsed into dust.
The dust whirled and spun within the circling winds for a moment, then vanished.
“Sol and Mani,” came a breeze-driven whisper. “You have freed me as I bid you do, my beloved students, and now we will have our revenge on Lokith. He betrayed me!” The whisper had become a wind-gust of a shout. “He destroyed all my plans! And he enslaved you!”
“Revenge!” hissed a different voice within the circling breezes within the Chapel of Hel.
“Mistress Thokk!” said a third voice. “Help me! I am losing my hold!”
“Remember your training!” Thokk’s disembodied voice commanded. “Concentrate! And chant as I do the Runes of the Seventh Cycle. We will merge! Strengthen!”
Thokk began to hiss a Rune-chant. The whispers of Sol and Mani joined in and their voices grew stronger, louder.
Thokk and her former students, now her allies, chanted the Runes. Their voices gained strength. Merged. And then there was but a single voice shouting Runes within the Chapel of Hel.
With a final ragged scream, the chant reached its climax and stopped.
The merged breezes became howling winds and increased a hundredfold. The walls of the Chapel shuddered, cracked, and exploded outward. The roaring, howling force continued tearing at the castle’s interior, devouring walls, growing stronger by the moment. The crimson veins in the castle’s black stones slowly vanished as if being sucked dry, until finally even the castle’s outer walls could not contain the relentless fury of the shrieking winds and they, too, exploded outward, sending massive blocks of stone arcing out to crash down the mountainside.
The howling tempest rose out of the castle’s jagged remains and into the sky, then began to move northward, swiftly gaining speed, rapidly leaving behind the collapsed towers and broken battlements of the Castle of Thokk.
Back to the north, toward the encampment, rushed the storm-raging fury of Thokk, sharing consciousness and energy with Mani and Sol, hungry to wreak death and destruction, hungry for revenge.
* * *
Jalna rode through the gate of the encampment astride a wind-treading Hel-horse. Lokith rode one of the skeletal steeds beside her, while the majority of his remaining Hel-warriors followed behind.
A shaggy fur cloak, its hood drawn up over her head, had been tied around her shoulders.
She was bound to the Hel-horse both by saddle ties and by a rope that stretched from one ankle to the other beneath her steed. But those were not the only ropes she bore, and because of her other bonds, every movement of her galloping steed caused deep, unrelenting pain to shoot along her nerves.
Her hands were bound palm-to-palm behind her. Her elbows were again drawn together by a single, punishing strand of thin rope. A thicker strand of splintery rope ran from the elbow rope to loop her throat, keeping her constantly on the verge of strangulation. Other ropes cinched her abdomen, waist, and breasts in a crushing embrace that made each shallow, gasping breath a painful and exhausting struggle. One other rope, anchored to her waist ropes in the front, had been pulled between her legs and tied to her wrists, keeping them in place. But her own torment was not foremost in her mind.
Tyrulf, she thought, tears blurring her vision as she imagined what might even now be happening to him. May your death be swifter than Lokith intends, and may you feast in Valhalla this night. You shall be avenged, my love. I vow it by my soul. I shall have revenge for your death and my pain. Somehow! Some way! Sometime!
Bound to her Hel-horse, tears of pain and hatred and frustration streaking her face, Jalna’s night ride went on and on as Lokith took her steadily farther from the encampment and the man her actions had condemned.
HANGING FROM the ceiling beam in the stable, Tyrulf fought his way back to consciousness. Awareness had been coming and going for what seemed a long time. Once, it seemed, that he had half-awakened in great pain, and once or twice he had thought he’d heard Jalna’s voice, cursing in pain. But he had been unable to remain conscious or even indicate his dim awareness.
Every nerve in his body felt as if it were afire, and there was a deep pain in his side each time he breathed. He heard male voices nearby, laughing and boisterous. When his vision cleared, he saw four Hel-warriors standing on the hay-strewn floor of the stable, grinning up at him.
“Lokith has given you to us,” one said.
“He has taken your woman for himself,” another told him.
>
“She’s gone.”
“Gone from the encampment on a little night ride.”
“You will never see her again.”
“But Lokith shall.”
“All of her is what Lokith shall see,” one said, laughing. “He’ll soon make her forget all about you, I’ll wager.”
“She might as well,” one man said, taking a torch from a bracket and looking at its flame speculatively, “because there’ll soon not be enough left of you for any woman to love. Our orders are to see that you take a very long time to die.”
“Is it true that you turned traitor to General Kovna because of lust for that woman?”
“Traitors deserve the worst deaths possible.”
“Aye. Get to work with that torch. Warm him up at bit.”
“But, where to start?”
“I know where I’d start if the torch were in my hand.”
“Do you mean,” the man with the torch laughed, “here?”
Tyrulf cursed between gritted teeth but did not cry out.
“No. That’s not where I meant. Try again.”
“Here?” the man asked, searing Tyrulf’s flesh in another spot.
“No.”
“Then,” the man grinned, “you must mean here!”
Tyrulf’s roar of pain reached the Hel-warriors who were closing the encampment’s gate.
“They promised we’d all get a turn at him,” one said, “but from the way he’s hollering, there may not be much left.”
The warrior beside him laughed in agreement as another ragged cry cut through the air, but before that cry died away, it mingled with another sound, the sudden, mournful howling of a fast-rising wind. A strong gust pushed against the nearly closed gate, forcing it to open wider.
The two warriors cursed, and pushed harder on the gate as the wind swiftly gained strength. Within moments, although the sky overhead was still clear of clouds, a tempest was raging about the encampment, and the gate was pushed completely open.
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